Director's Cut: Chapter Five

I told my mom I was going to kill all the old women in my book. Now she’s the Holy Crone.

📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter Five of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: You can watch the video or read the written version below.

🌊 Chapter 5 went out last Saturday. Read it (or listen to the audio version 🔊) now if you haven’t yet!

---

Ah, good day. It is time for the Director’s Cut for Chapter 5. I have lost the doohickey for my mic, but we’re gonna continue.

I told my mom I’d kill all the old women

So Chapter 5 is when you really start to see more of the character, the Holy Crone, and she is one of my favorite characters because... well, story time!

Way back in 2019, when I was first drafting this, I lived in San Francisco, and my mom lived a 10-minute walk away. We actually lived together for a while, and then she decided to not have me as her roommate. ( was definitely getting the better end of that bargain.) So she moved out nearby, and I would walk over and have dinner with her once a week.

As a related side note, I was also just starting to date my now husband, David, at the time, and I invited him to one of these weekly dinners with my mom on our third date. Which he then later told me was really early to meet my mom.

And I said, “Well, I love my mom, and she cooks really yummy dinners.” So clearly it worked out, even though supposedly I invited him too early.

But one of these nights at dinner with my mom (David was not in the picture yet), I’m telling my mom about this world and this island. And that they’re gonna have annual sacrifices, so they need to keep procreating, and I say to her, “Well, the girls will have these chores, and then the matrons are gonna be birthing at this rate. But once they hit menopause, I don’t really have a need for them.”

“So I think I’m just gonna kill all the old women.”

And she’s like, “What? You’re gonna kill all the old ladies?”

I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll probably just banish them. You know, resource scarcity, gotta go.”

And she gets so indignant. She’s like, “You can’t get rid of the old women. I’m important! Look, I’ve taught you things. I’m feeding you right now. You cannot get rid of the old ladies.”

I’m like, “Okay, okay, fine. I’ll keep the old ladies for education and nurturing. Touché.” So I went back, and that’s when I created crones, this idea of this older woman in society. Not exactly groundbreaking, y’all, I know.

But it’s funny, because I kept this comment, this frustration, this how-dare-you from my mother every time I revised the story over the years. And so the crones, these older women crones, slowly became the Holy Crone, the leader. And though my mother is very kind and not a villain, that reaction at the dinner table slowly morphed into... well, as you saw in Chapter 5, the Holy Crone.

So my mother did not demand that I write her into the story as a controlling villain. She just asked to not be killed. But now my mother is the Holy Crone.

She was right. You gotta watch out for the old ladies.

My agent said it was too weird

And if you are intrigued by this Holy Crone as much as I am, well, let’s just say next week you’re gonna be getting inside her head. No, really. You’re gonna get a Holy Crone POV. Amazing.

That fully falls in the category of my former agent saying, “Get weird with it.” And I did. And then she didn’t like it and thought it was too weird, and I said, “It’s too late. I love it.” And that’s the version you get.

What the Unholy Waters really are

So something that is revealed in this chapter subtly, but I’m gonna give you the full answer here because this is the director’s cut, is this definition of the Unholy Waters:

Upgrade to In the Cave to keep reading:

• My Florida beach vacation that became the Unholy Waters

• The kids who can see twice as well underwater, and why

• The people who evolved a bigger organ to dive 200 feet

• The wedding trip that took me to a real-life floating village

• The ancient philosopher who’d take the Holy Crone’s side

• What I said when David asked, “So you’re gonna lie to me?”

Plus the full video.